This invention relates to a loader for signatures, loose sheets, gathered sheets or pamphletized sheets, and the like, particularly for use on collating, pamphletizing, stitching, and similar bookbinding machines.
Loaders of the above general type are known per se. These comprise basically a supporting frame, a belt feeder, elevator belts, and associated transport device. Such known loaders are mounted on wheels for mobility, and each of them forms an individual loading unit adapted for association with, for example, the feeders of collating machines, pamphletizing machines, book-sewing machines, as well as other related bookbinding machinery. Some of these machines are equipped with bins or stations for receiving and stacking signatures therein, machines with from one to several such bins being quite common. Each bin is fed either manually or from a loader associated with it, the loader being positioned manually in front of its related bin by pushing and guiding it along on its own wheels. The time required for manually adjusting each loader is considerably long, being in the order of some 10 minutes. Such manual adjustments of the loaders become necessary whenever one switches from one size format of the signatures, or the like, to a different one. Switching to different size signatures, or the like, also involves manual adjustment of the conventional supporting and adjusting wheels of the signature transport device, the foremost of said wheels, facing the input end of the elevator belts, having the function of aiding in the engagement with the first signature, and the following ones acting as mere supporting elements.
In currently used loaders of conventional design, in addition to the considerable overall time required for adjusting all of the loaders associated with a given bookbinding machine, a major disadvantage is that, to allow for the cited adjustment of the transport device, a gap must be left between any two successive feeders, for example in the order of 35-40 centimeters and above, which reflects particularly disadvantageously on the overall length of the collating, or similar, machine, whose length may well exceed by over 30% the length it would have if said gaps between successive loaders could be taken up.